http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
TO hear each side's version of the current situation between Israel
and the Palestinians is like watching Rashoman in Yiddish.

In attempting to determine who is right and who is wrong in the situation, people seem to follow either the Jack Webb "Dragnet" approach --- "Just the facts, M'am,"
or the "I Love Lucy" --- "Don't confuse me with the facts" approach.

In life, when in doubt as to which of two roads to take, taking both
is usually the best course of action. So, let's just talk facts, but facts
so simple that even Lucy would not be confused.

We never subscribed to the "I got here first" school of deciding
ownership of anything --- particularly a whole country. If that were the
case we would all be living in tepees and paying our rent in colored beads and
firewater. It is interesting, however, to note the following:

Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel for the past
3,300 years, with dominion over the land for a thousand years, while the
only Arab dominion since 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

As far as the city of Jerusalem, whose fate seems to be a central
issue of concern, it was founded by King David. Mohammed never even stopped by
for a bagel or anything else.

Jerusalem has remained the Jewish capital for over 3,300 years, while
at the same time it has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.
And for the bean counters it should be noted that Jerusalem is mentioned
over 100 times in the Jewish Scriptures, but never mentioned even once in the
Koran. Jews pray facing Jerusalem, while Muslims not only turn the other
cheek, but they pray with their backs to the city. So they know where to
face when praying, Arabs all over the world stop cars on highways and ask
the drivers, "Which way to Mecca?"

The entire country of Israel is less than half the size of San
Bernardino County in California. The Arabs, not counting the Palestinians, have
eight countries, as opposed to the sliver of mineral and oil-poor land that is
Israel. Therefore, when the Palestinians claim they have nowhere to live
except Israel, this is only because their brothers don't want to let them
into their own countries. We can understand why a person wouldn't want
his brother-in-law to live nearby; we can't understand doing that to one's own
brother --- particularly if you were the one that told him to move out of
his old neighborhood in the first place.

The Arab nations initiated all five wars against Israel and lost all
five of them. But if you put an Arab alone, particularly if you let him hide
somewhere with a rifle where nobody can see him, he is deadly --- provided
the person he shoots is half a mile away, defenseless, and preferably a woman
or child.

Jews are the opposite. If somebody meets a Jew in an alley, and
points a gun at him demanding his money, the Jew will negotiate --- ask the
robber to "...sit down, let's talk, have a piece of cake, a cup of coffee.
Why do you need all my money? How about half ...?" and then he offers to
sell the robber some shirts at below "cost."

Israel is of course a vibrant democracy. Not one of the Arab states
has a leader that has been freely elected by the people. In most of them,
women have little or no rights. Jewish women, on the other hand, have all the
rights possible in life. A Jewish man is lucky if his wife lets him put
his name on his tombstone.

In 1948, when Israel achieved independence, they invited the Arabs to
stay in peaceful co-existence. But the Arab governments encouraged the
Israeli Arabs to leave Israel and sixty-eight percent of the Arabs did, in
fact, do just that. But the 630,000 who did leave were not allowed to be
absorbed into the Arab population of the surrounding countries. About the
same number of Jews were forced to flee from the Arab countries because of
persecution and pogroms, but they were completely integrated into the
general Israeli population.

In the Second World War, six million Jews perished because of Nazi
persecution. Virtually all of the Western world opposed the Nazis. The
Arabs, on the other hand, were strongly pro-German. The long-term Arab
policies seem designed to trade Arab oil for Jewish blood. The rest of
the civilized world also has been subjected to oil-fueled Arab blackmail.

Sadly, the size of the lines at American gas pumps and rises in the
price of crude oil has a profound effect on the U.S. Department of State
with which the Arabs have enjoyed a long-standing cozy relationship.

The September 11th attack left the Western world no choice but to join
America in its crusade. Since pure hatred of the United States is
patently an absurd explanation for the heinous events of September 11th, the
fanatics who call themselves "Muslims" -- but who have little in common with the
majority of decent and law-abiding true Muslims -- ascribe as motive, in
their chicken- scrawled notes of hatred, the United States' support of Israel.

The nation of Israel was around two thousand years
before the rise of Islam. What bin Laden and his fellow cave dwellers
hate more than Israel is modern Western civilization itself and particularly
its centerpiece --- the United States. Living a pre-medieval existence, they
view an America, whose economic system dominates the world, is the world's
premier military power, has a substantial presence in the Middle East, an America
whose culture, and democratic institutions threaten their way of life.

Unfortunately, people are beginning to swallow the nonsense that couples
militant Muslim madness with the Palestinian problem. Most of the world
still resists this con job --- for how long? Sadly, three things are
certain: death, taxes, and anti-Semitism. Let's therefore hope for a short and
decisive
war.